Regarding the Vandalism of Danish Embassies - Perspective From a Syrian Living Abroad

Picture taken from The Damascene Blog

I want to be able to read people’s minds, particularly the minds of those who torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus, and the Danish Embassy in Beirut. It boggles my mind the way some people think.

How does setting an embassy on fire, improve the situation? Why burn the embassy of a country, when the officials in that country expressed their concern over the cartoons?

I don’t get it! If anything we are now in a worse situation than we were before. I can just imagine millions of people in Europe right now saying “see, I told you so”. What bothers me is how easy it is for a bunch of thugs to come along and create such a horrible image for Arabs. The people who commit such acts are the ones who fuel the western media with excellent news stories which further echo Arab fanaticism and ignorance.

I find the acts shameful. Violence and vandalism is not an answer to any problem. We know better than that. While most of us asked for fairness and respect from the Danes, we should now apologize for what has happened to their embassies. Although none of us supported this sort of action in the first place, I find it only appropriate to apologize on the behalf of the morons who committed the torching.

I also demand an investigation to track down those responsible for the vandalism, and to hold them responsible. We cannot hold a double standard, asking fairness and respect from the Danes and not providing it.

Lastly, I hope people don’t take the actions of a few thugs as representative of the Syrian or Lebanese people. Just like we expressed our voices of concern over the cartoons in the first, we’re all expressing our views again over the shameful acts. We, the rational, should work together to show the world that there’s more to Arabs than what they see on television. If I learned anything from the cartoon fiasco, it’s that our views, beliefs and culture are not well known to the west. I think this whole situation could have been prevented if there wasn’t much ignorance on both sides of the table.

Technorati Tags: danish, denmark, norway, norwegian, embassy, embassies, damascus, cartoons, syria